Perfect Your Playlist

The ultimate roadtrip demands the ultimate playlist. Sign up for a Spotify premium account ($10 a month) that lets you play unlimited tunes on your phone while offline, then get going on the perfect mix. Adam Geringer-Dunn, the Brooklyn, NY-based musical talent booker, recommends "classics" like the Allman Brothers Band's "Blue Sky" and Buffalo Springfield's "Hot Dusty Roads" along with this summer's sure-to-be anthems like Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" and Icona Pop's "I Love It."

Grab a Boho Bag

The best roadtrips are freewheeling and unpredictable. Set the tone from the start by tossing your things in a bohemian chic weekender bag, such as the Nirali Print weekender from Star Mela ($128, left) in lightweight canvas with leather straps, or the Metea Tie-Dyed Weekender ($298, right) made by artisans in Guatemala with a cheerful mix of tie-dye and geometric patterns and an easy, cross-body style.

Peek Under the Hood

Before peeling out of town, make sure your wheels can go the distance. Don't go anywhere without checking your battery, fluids (not just oil), filters, belts and hoses, tire pressure and windshield wiper blades, advises mechanic Audra Fordin, who teaches basic car maintenance for women at Women Auto Know. Make sure your insurance and registration are up to date and that you have a flashlight and a spare tire set.

Pack Gourmet Finger Foods

Hitting up the grocery store before hitting the road is always smart, but taking provisions up a notch will make the trip feel that much more special. Make a decadent trail mix with dark chocolate chips, dried apricots, almonds and cashews, sprinkle homemade popcorn with truffle salt, or assemble toothpick skewers with mozzarella balls and cherry tomatoes, suggests New York City-based nutritionist Marissa Lippert.

Grown-Up Car Games

There's a reason your parents put up with hours of "eye spy" and "license plate"—these games make long schleps fly much faster. Do your passengers a favor and raid the kids' aisle for retro travel games, such as the utterly addicting Monopoly Deal card game. Can't bear to unplug? Zynga's Words with Friends, Scramble with Friends, and Dice with Friends apps imitate Scrabble, Boggle, and Yahtzee.

Shop the Gas Station

Roadside convenience stores are hardly health food havens, but you can get in and out under 200 calories. Really. Curb soda cravings with flavored seltzer water or unsweetened iced tea, says Lippert, and comb through the aisles for mini-bags of whole wheat pretzels and fresh fruit instead of candy.

Don't Do All the Talking

You and your BFFs may be able to chatter for hours, but sometimes it's nice to leave the yapping to the pros. Fight highway boredom by downloading a few not-too-serious audio books from Audible (think Tina Fey's Bossypants or even Fifty Shades of Grey) and check the NPR roadtrip page so you can tune in to "This American Life" and "Radiolab" wherever the road takes you.

Eat Local (and Organic and Healthy)

Decent restaurants can be hard to come by in the land of Dairy Queens and roadside diners. Foodtripping, a new app created by Ford (and co-founded by Entourage's Adrian Grenier), serves up a database of 50,000 organic restaurants, farmer's markets and juice bars from coast to coast so you can geo-locate the nearest fresh, healthy spots.

Don't Lose Your Way

The all-time biggest roadtrip bummer: getting lost. GPS systems and cell phone navigation is great—until you make a wrong turn or run out of juice. Make sure to pack a car phone charger, just in case, along with an old-fashioned, analog Road Atlas, such as Rand McNally's just-released 2013 version. (Now you just have to remember how to read an actual map.)